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Leo Strauss Biography

Leo Strauss (/straʊs/; German: [ʃtraʊs]; September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was a German-American political philosopher and classicist who specialized in classical political philosophy. He was born in Germany to Jewish parents and later emigrated from Germany to the United States. He spent much of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books.

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Leo Strauss Quotes

Life is too short to live with any but the greatest books.

Book, Greatest, Life Is, Life Is Too Short, Live, Short

The emancipation of the scholars and scientists from philosophy is according to [Nietzsche] only a part of the democratic movement, i. e. of the emancipation of the low from subordination to the high. . . . The plebeian character of the contemporary scholar or scientist is due to the fact that he has no reverence for himself.

According, Character, Movement, Nietzsche, Philosophy, Reverence

The silence of a wise man is always meaningful.

Meaningful, Men, Silence, Wise

All political action aims at either preservation or change. When desiring to preserve, we wish to prevent a change for the worse; when desiring to change, we wish to bring about something better. All political action is then guided by some thought of better or worse.

Action, Aims, Guided, Political, Wish

History teaches us that a given view has been abandoned in favor of another by all men, or by all competent men, or perhaps by only the most vocal men; it does not teach us whether the change was sound or whether the rejected view deserved to be rejected. Only an impartial analysis of the view in question, an analysis that is not dazzled by the victory or stunned by the defeat of the adherents of the view concerned could teach us anything regarding the worth of the view and hence regarding the meaning of the historical change.

Historical, History, Men, Regarding, Views, Worth

Men are constantly attracted and deluded by two opposite charms: the charm of competence which is engendered by mathematics and everything akin to mathematics, and the charm of humble awe, which is engendered by meditation on the human soul and its experiences. Philosophy is characterized by the gentle, if firm, refusal to succumb to either charm.

Competence, Human, Humble, Men, Philosophy, Soul

But the God of the Bible is not only One, but the only possible One.

Bible, God, Possible

The belief that value judgments are not subject, in the last analysis, to rational control, encourages the inclination to make irresponsible assertions regarding right and wrong or good and bad. One evades discussion of serious issues by the simple device of passing them off as value problems, whereas, to say the least, many of these conflicts arose out of man's very agreement regarding values.

Agreement, Issues, Men, Simple, Subject

Philosophizing means, then, to ascend from public dogma to essentially private knowledge.

Dogma, Essentially, Knowledge, Mean, Philosophizing, Public

We somehow believe that our point of view is superior, higher than those of the greatest minds either because our point of view is that of our time, and our time, being later than the time of the greatest minds, can be presumed to be superior to their times; or else because we believe that each the greatest minds was right from his point of view, but not, as he claims, simply right.

Believe, Higher, Mind, Right, Superior, Views

Our understanding of the thought of the past is liable to be the more adequate, the less the historian is convinced of the superiority of his own point of view, or the more he is prepared to admit the possibility that he may have to learn something, not merely about the thinkers of the past, but from them.

Adequate, Liable, Past, Understanding, Views

Even by proving that a certain view is indispensable for living well, one proves merely that the view in question is a salutary myth: one does not prove it to be true.

Certain, Doe, Indispensable, Salutary, Views

When speaking of a "body of knowledge" or of "the results of research," e. g. , we tacitly assign the same cognitive status to inherited knowledge and to independently acquired knowledge. To counteract this tendency a special effort is required to transform inherited knowledge into genuine knowledge by revitalizing its original discovery, and to discriminate between the genuine and the spurious elements of what claims to be inherited knowledge.

Discovery, Effort, Genuine, Research, Same, Special

The adjective "political" in "political philosophy" designates not so much the subject matter as a manner of treatment; from this point of view, I say, "political philosophy" means primarily not the philosophic study of politics, but the political, or popular, treatment of philosophy, or the political introduction to philosophy the attempt to lead qualified citizens, or rather their qualified sons, from the political life to the philosophic life.

Matter, Mean, Philosophy, Son, Study, Treatment

By becoming aware of the dignity of the mind, we realize the true ground of the dignity of man and therewith the goodness of the world, whither we understand it as created or uncreated, which is the home of man because it is the home of the human mind.

Goodness, Ground, Home, Men, Mind, True

It is as absurd to expect members of philosophy departments to be philosophers as it is to expect members of art departments to be artists.

Absurd, Art, Members, Philosopher, Philosophers, Philosophy

Education, they [philosophers] felt, is the only answer to the always pressing question, to the political question par excellence, of how to reconcile order which is not oppression with freedom which is not license.

Answer, Excellence, Felt, Order, Political

God is therefore unknowable. This is the fundamental premise of the Bible.

Fundamental, Fundamentals, God, God Is There, Premise, Premises

Education to perfect gentlemanship, to human excellence, liberal education consists in reminding oneself of human excellence, of human greatness.

Education, Excellence, Gentlemanship, Greatness, Human, Perfect

Men must always have distinguished (e. g. in judicial matters) between hearsay and seeing with one's own eyes and have preferred what one has seen to what he has merely heard from others. But the use of this distinction was originally limited to particular or subordinate matters. As regards the most weighty matters the first things and the right way the only source of knowledge was hearsay.

Eye, Firsts, Men, Originally, Seeing

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